Tech industry titan Google is warning users that bad actors are illicitly using cloud computing servers to mine crypto.
A new report by Google’s Cybersecurity Action Team finds that badly-constructed cloud instances are being targeted by scammers looking to use cloud resources to mine crypto, run phishing scams and use ransomware.
“While cloud customers continue to face a variety of threats across applications and infrastructure, many successful attacks are due to poor hygiene and a lack of basic control implementation. Most recently, our team has responded to cryptocurrency mining abuse, phishing campaigns, and ransomware.
Attackers also continue to exploit poorly configured Cloud instances with the goal of obtaining profit through cryptocurrency mining and traffic pumping. The universe of ransomware also continues to expand with the discovery of some new ransomware that appears to be offshoots of existing malware with mixed capabilities.”
The tech giant says that of the 50 latest breaches of its Google Cloud Platform (GCP), 86% of them were used to perform cryptocurrency mining.
Further investigation reveals that 58% of the time, the fraudsters downloaded crypto mining software within 22 seconds after the cloud platform was breached, which signals scripted non-human intervention.
“This suggests that the initial attacks and subsequent downloads were scripted events not requiring human intervention. The ability to manually intervene in these situations to prevent exploitation is nearly impossible.”
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Featured Image: Shutterstock/Fer Gregory